Racial discrimination in fun runs is a crime

When organizers ban from competing in road races foreign runners like the Kenyans who are believed to be far more superior to local runners simply because they are far more superior to local runners, that’s DISCRIMINATION.

When organizers disqualify foreign runners like the Kenyans from the cash prizes even if they outran and outclassed everybody else in a given race and give the prize money instead to the so-called locale “elite” runners, it is still DISCRIMINATION.

Kenyan runner Joshphat Kiptanui is right to cry foul against road race organizers in Cebu who bar runners from competing in local races or those who exclude from the prize money foreign runners who excel in a race to favor local runners who rely on running as a source of income.

The legal definition of discrimination is pretty much cut and dried. It refers to the treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit. Discrimination can be the effect of some law or established practice that confers privileges on a certain class or denies privileges to a certain class because of race, age, sex, nationality, religion, or handicap.

In January 4, 1969, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination came into force after its adoption by the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Being a signatory to this international convention, the Philippines is bound by it and its provisions became part of the law of the land.

In fact, the Philippines has Presidential Decree No. 966 which penalizes violations of the International Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Under the law, all organizations and all propaganda activities, which promote and incite racial discrimination are illegal and prohibited and punishable by imprisonment of ten (10) days to  six (6) months.

Race organizers say that the disqualification of foreign runners, particularly the Kenyans from the prize money in road races is for altruistic reasons – to help the so-called local “elite” runners who have been shut-out of the podium since the Kenyans started competing regularly in the local road races starting 2011.

You may ask, why should we care when it’s just the Kenyans who are affected anyway?

If you want to be the best, you have to race with the best. Our local runners will not get better by shutting out from local races foreign runners. Cebu’s running community, which prides itself as the best in the country just got set back 200 years with this kind of backward thinking. Discrimination has no place in a humane society. That’s why we should care.

The last time an American won the men’s open in the Boston Marathon was in 1983. In this 29-year drought for an all-American winner, Japan, Australia, Italy and South Korea each outran the Americans and won a Boston Marathon once, the British twice, the Ethiopians three times and the Kenyans all of 20 times including this year’s winner Wesley Korir (2:12:40). Despite this almost three-decade drought, the Boston Athletic Association would not think of excluding foreign runners just to ensure an all-American win.

“To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color,” wrote Nobel Prize winning author William Faulkner, “is like living in Alaska and being against snow.”

I strongly urge runners to BOYCOTT runs that practice discrimination in any form. One of such runs is the Sonshine Radio Half Marathon on July 22. I also join the call for the City Councils of Cebu and Mandaue as well as the Cebu provincial Board to pass local ordinances that would prohibit discrimination in any form in all road races.